Engineering News - Spring 2008

Shown in photo above, the Space Shuttle Endeavour, piloted by Gregory H. Johnson ’85, lights up the early morning sky at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, lifting off at 2:28 a.m. EDT on March 11. The shuttled returned to Earth at 8:39 p.m. EDT on March 26 after completing the longest-ever mission in space.

The Fu Foundation SEAS marks a milestone in 2008 as two alumni fly missions into outer space within a few months of each other. Col. Gregory H. Johnson ’85, who received a master's degree in flight structures, was the pilot of STS-123, the space shuttle flight that left Earth on March 11 and returned on March 26. Michael J. Massimino ’84, who received his bachelor's degree in IEOR, is slated for liftoff on August 28 as part of STS-125, the final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

This was Johnson's first space flight and it will be Massimino's second, having previously serviced the Hubble Space Telescope in March 2002 as part of STS-109. While Johnson and Massimino come from different specialties and bring to the missions a different set of skills, each credits Columbia Engineering with helping them achieve the status of NASA astronaut.

Johnson received his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy prior to attending Columbia. “Having a background in higher level math and applications of the rules of engineering to flight structures has served me well in flying,” says Johnson. “It has been a great benefit to me, even though I didn't work solely as an engineer for most of my career. As a test pilot and astronaut, I've been able to understand the technical details of flight and so going to Columbia was a great addition to my career. Furthermore, my Columbia degree was certainly an asset that helped me get selected as an astronaut. I'm very pleased to be a Columbia grad.”

Massimino, a mission specialist who holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he first wanted to be an astronaut when he was a child, but it was only after graduating from Columbia Engineering that he rekindled his childhood dream. “The Engineering School provided not only a first-class education,” says Massimino, “but also the opportunity to meet and work with outstanding faculty and students from around the world. I learned that, through hard work, and gaining the right experiences, dreams can come true. I've been lucky enough to live my dreams of spaceflight, and my thanks go to Columbia for setting me on that path.”

Johnson emphasized how lucky he felt to be chosen for astronaut training, saying that most who apply for the program have a high level of competence. Johnson's credentials show his competence. After graduating from SEAS, he became an Air Force pilot, flying 61 combat missions in Desert Storm and Operation Southern Watch. In 1994, he became an Air Force Test Pilot and in 1996 was awarded the Gen. Bobby Bond trophy as the #1 test pilot in the Air Force. In all, he has logged more than 4,000 flight hours on 40 different aircraft. He was selected for astronaut training in 1998 and, upon completion of initial astronaut training in 2000, was assigned to the Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrade (CAU) council, where he designed and evaluated a new array of space shuttle cockpit displays. After the STS-107 disaster, Johnson was the astronaut representative to the External Tank (ET) foam impact test team that eventually proved that ET foam debris on ascent could critically damage the shuttle's leading edge thermal protection system. In 2004, he was designated as the Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Safety Branch, focusing on all aspects of Space Shuttle, ISS, and T-38 safety.

Johnson's mission, STS-123, is the first flight in which all of the major international partners in the International Space Station were represented on board, either on the way to space or back. The mission delivered the Japanese Kibo Logistics Module and the Canadian Dextre robotics system to the International Space Station. When the shuttle departed the station, Mission Specialist Garrett Reisman stayed behind, trading places with European Space Agency astronaut Léopold Eyharts.

For his initial foray into space, one of Johnson's duties was to operate the shuttle's robotic arm and use the OBSS, the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, to look underneath the orbiter to check out the tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon for damage. “We basically inspected in great detail, every little patch of thermal protection system on the shuttle,” he said.

On the second and third EVAs (extra-vehicular activities), Johnson and his teammate Reisman maneuvered veteran spacewalker Rick Linnehan on the end of the station robotic arm as he helped assemble Mr. Dextre, an advanced robot designed to perform more complex tasks than the existing robotic arms. (Coincidentally, one of Linnehan's previous missions was to service the Hubble Space telescope, where he worked closely with Mike Massimino.)

To practice for his mission, Johnson trained in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and in a Virtual Reality Lab, which he describes as a “big video game.” What can't be fully simulated in the pool can be practiced in virtual reality. “The spacewalkers put on a virtual reality helmet and they can actually see the geometry that they're really going to be experiencing in space,” says Johnson. Having returned from this mission, Johnson can now be called a veteran, the position that Mike Massimino is now in.

“Last time, I was the inexperienced guy,” says Massimino, referring to STS-l09, “and this time, I'm the experienced guy.” On his first EVA, Massimino and Michael T. Good will be going inside the space telescope to replace three Rate Sensor Units that house six gyroscopes to help point the telescope accurately. Hubble has been operating in “Two-Gyro Science Mode” since August, 2005, when some of the gyroscopes failed.

They then will replace one of two battery modules housed in the Support Systems Module of the telescope that routes power from Hubble's solar arrays to its systems. The battery module contains three nickel-hydrogen batteries, measures about 3 feet by 4 feet, and weighs 500 pounds. “In space,” says Massimino, “there is no weight but there is still mass, so the module has handles to hold onto.”

His advice to his rookie partner will be to “go slowly.” “You need to go very slowly in zero gravity because once you get moving, it is hard to stop. You have to be careful; any motions you make with your hands, your body will react to,” he says.

Massimino is especially excited about his second EVA on this mission. “We haven't tried this type of repair before,” he says, “and it is the part of the mission that I am looking forward to most.” The repair is to the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which was originally installed in 1997 and failed in 2004.

“We have to remove a panel of instruments resembling a computer board and replace it with a new one. The challenge is that it has 117 screws and every screw has a washer. We can't leave anything behind,” Massimino says. To help insure that nothing floats away, a big capture panel has been designed to go over the main panel. The capture panel has 100 holes in it and a specially designed tool fits through the hole to take off each screw and contain it within the panel.

Michael J. Massimino ’84 is about to be submerged in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near Johnson Space Center. He is wearing the training version of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuit. SCUBA-equipped divers (out of frame) are in the water to assist the crewmembers in their rehearsal, intended to help prepare them for work on the Hubble Space Telescope.

“There are really cool engineering jobs at NASA, developing new tools and procedures, and figuring out the best way to design things and to do things is all part of it,” he says. “We work with a huge team of engineers from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, and engineers from Johnson Space Center. They're the ones who worked on the tool design to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. We tell them what we need from the spacewalk perspective and they work with us to make the tools and fabricate them. They designed a new power tool that looks like a small drill that you'd get at a hardware store to take off the screws on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. They have to shape the handle to fit our gloves exactly. It has to be just the right size to use with the gloves—not too small or too big.”

Massimino and fellow veteran mission specialist John Grunfeld figure out how to accomplish the tasks set for their respective teams. Once they are comfortable doing it out of the water, in a training facility across the hall from their offices, then it's everyone in the pool for practice in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

“Pool time is a precious resource,” says Massimino. “It's the biggest indoor pool in the world, 200 feet by 100 feet wide by 40 feet deep so it can fit the whole space station and a telescope payload. Everything is built just like the stuff that's in space, but it is in the water. We practice the whole routine in the water because the water slows things down.”

The final task, installing New Outer Blanket Layers (NOBLs) on the Space Telescope Imagine Spectrograph, “isn't as much fun as the repair task,” says Massimino, “but it will extend the life of the telescope by putting a thermal plate on the doors.”

Massimino's path from Columbia Engineering to NASA Mission Specialist included advanced degrees, patents, work as a research engineer and an academician. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT and earned two patents from research conducted on human operator control of space robotics systems in the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department's Human-Machine Systems Laboratory. As a research engineer at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace in Houston, he developed laptop computer displays to assist operators of the Space Shuttle remote manipulator system. He was an adjunct assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering & Material Sciences Department at Rice University, where he taught feedback control of mechanical systems from 1992 to 1995. In September 1995, he was appointed an assistant professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, teaching classes in human-machine systems engineering and conducting research on human-machine interfaces for space and aircraft systems. He is currently an adjunct professor at Rice University and Georgia Tech and has published papers in technical journals and in the proceedings of technical conferences.

Astronaut Alums Take SEAS to New Heights

Astronaut Alums Take
SEAS to New Heights